The Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers Book
Footwork: The Story of Fred and Adele Astaire
by Roxane Orgill
from Candlewick
Follow the footsteps of two persevering siblings who danced their way into a cherished place in the spotlight.
In 1905, four-and-a-half-year-old Fred Astaire put on his first pair of dancing shoes — and from that moment, his life was filled with singing, dancing, and fancy footwork. Fred’s older sister, Adele, was the real dancer, but Fred worked hard to get all the steps just right, and it wasn’t long before he was the one capturing headlines and stealing the show. In this fascinating story of child stars who hoof their way to knockout success on Broadway and beyond, Roxane Orgill and StĂ©phane Jorisch team up for a bravura performance, capturing the sophistication, fluidity, and grace of two of the biggest names in dance history.
Fred Astaire: A Wonderful Life
The Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers Murder Case
by George Baxt
from St Martins Pr
Dancing in the Dark
The Japanese are bombing Guadalcanal, Montgomery squares off against Rommel in North Africa, and in Hollywood, Toby Peters fights his own private war. Real estate prince and ex-mob king Arthur Forbes, a.k.a. Fingers Intaglia, wants dancing lessons for Luna Martin, his vainglorious, lead-footed moll, and he wants America's most famous tap shoes to teach her. Fred Astaire wants Toby to get Forbes and the alarmingly loose Luna off his back--and every other part of his anatomy. In a case choreographed for trouble, Toby will hoof it with Betty Grable and Rita Hayworth in front of several thousand witnesses--while desperately trying to unmask a fast-stepping killer, stop Astaire from waltzing into a pair of cement galoshes, and keep his own flat feet from doing a Last Tango in Tinseltown.
Astaire and Rogers
by Edward Gallafent
from Columbia University Press
Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers endure in the American imagination. The charm and grace of their dancing in the ten films they made together, including Top Hat and Swing Time, elicit nostalgia today. Most books about the Astaire-Rogers films focus exclusively on the music and dance scenes, but this book shows that the films are much more than the sum of those scenes, which after all only account for approximately one-third of their films' running times. Gallafent argues that, contrary to received opinion, the musical numbers are not discrete, generic moments dropped in to enliven the films. Instead, the music and dance routines advance the movies' themes.
Gallafent shows how dialogue, plotting, and the audience's perception of this striking professional couple affect the context, and thus meaning, for the song and dance routines. The book examines how the Astaire-Rogers musicals, which were produced and originally viewed as a series, relate to one another and to other musicals of their day. Gallafent also provides an illuminating account of the films Astaire and Rogers made separately during the 1940s before their final reunion in The Barkleys of Broadway. Astaire and Rogers concludes by
tracing the development of their star personas both together and apart, and shows how the films were designed around those personas.
Steps in Time
by Fred Astaire
from Cooper Square Press
Fred Astaire allows us to see through the effortless balletic exuberance.
Starring Fred Astaire
Fred Astaire (A Pyramid illustrated history of the movies)
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